Employee of the Month
by MysteriousTwinkie
Summary: AU in which Detective Lance gets a new partner-Felicity Smoak. Will include canonical moments and hopefully follow the entire series.
1. Chapter 1--Big Girl

Chapter One—Big Girl

Detective Lance didn't want a partner, and he especially didn't want a _girl_ partner. Felicity could hear him say so, striding into the squad room with the lieutenant in his wake. She kept her head down and continued distributing her belongings about her new desk.

"She's younger than my daughter," Lance growled, "and she came from Internal Affairs."

"As tech support," Lt. Pike clarified.

"And now you're putting her in Major Crimes?"

"She's proven herself," said the lieutenant, "and I'm not going to stand in the way of anyone who wants to get _out_ of IA."

"She's younger than my daughter," Lance said again.

"Top of her class at MIT."

"Zero field experience."

"Actually, I do have some field experience," Felicity finally spoke up. "Mostly I sat in front of monitors and worked the kind of magic your mind couldn't even comprehend, but I _have_ been in the field before. So it's not a lot of experience, but it's not zero either . . ." Her voice trailed off as she realized she was rambling.

He was tall—like _really_ tall—and he was kind of looming over her now, taking in every detail as a detective should. His gaze traveled from her face to her clothes to the surface of the desk in front of her, where she'd just set her tablet, her TARDIS mug, and the framed photo of her with her parents at the Navy Pier in Chicago.

His expression was unreadable, and Felicity began to question her every decision. Should she have left the TARDIS mug at home? The cover on her tablet was sky blue with a drawing of an anime boy with silver hair and hearts for eyes. She'd had it for years, but the thought hadn't occurred to her until just now that it might be unprofessional for her new position.

And her clothes . . . She'd been planning this outfit since the day she learned the transfer had been approved. After two unsuccessful shopping trips and a marathon session in front of her closet, she'd gone with black slacks, a blue button-down shirt with three-quarter sleeves, and the most sensible pair of shoes she owned, black Mary Janes with the lowest of heels. Her slacks were pristine and devoid of cat hair because she'd changed into them in her car. Her shirt was freshly ironed, and she knew every hair of her ponytail was in place because she'd checked in each reflective surface between the employee parking lot and the squad room. But maybe she'd dressed too casual. Or maybe not casual enough, judging by Detective Lance's slightly disheveled attire.

"Detective Lance, meet Detective Smoak," the lieutenant said.

Felicity held out her hand, but Lance ignored it. His gaze had returned to her clothes but not, she was relieved to note, to her chest. Frequent breast ogling was one of the many reasons she'd been desperate to get out of IA.

"Is that how you're going to dress from now on?" he asked, meeting her eyes for the first time.

"Um, I guess? I mean, it's a limited wardrobe, but I'm sure I can—"

He cut her off with a quick gesture. "You look like an intern. Maybe put your hair up and try some big-girl shoes tomorrow." He turned back to Lt. Pike, who looked disappointed to be caught halfway to the door, making a break for it. "But no heels," Lance called back before walking away.

Felicity sank into her chair and put her head in her hands. _Big-girl shoes_? She'd have to go on another shopping trip now, and she'd have to consult her mom on what kind of style "big-girl" translated to.

"I expected to see that posture eventually, but not this soon," said a wry female voice.

Felicity looked up. The woman standing before her was tall, toned, and gorgeous. Laurel Lance. Felicity recognized her from all the internet research she'd done on her new partner. Some of it not, strictly speaking, legal.

"I'm Laurel, Detective Lance's daughter." She extended her hand and Felicity stood up to shake it. At least _someone_ was glad to see her.

"Oh, uh, he's not here," Felicity stammered. "He just left with—"

"Don't tell me," said Laurel, closing her eyes briefly. "He stomped off in a pout, didn't he?"

"Well . . ." Felicity didn't know what to say that wouldn't sound judgmental or rude.

Laurel smiled, tucking a honey strand of hair behind her ear. "You don't have to be diplomatic with me, Detective."

"Smoak. Felicity Smoak."

"Good to meet you, Detective Smoak," said Laurel, shaking her hand again. "I'm glad you're here. My dad's been working on his own too long. It's not good for him." Her green eyes clouded with unspoken emotions. "We'll probably be seeing more of each other, but I wanted to make sure my dad was behaving himself on your first day."

" 'Behaving himself'?" To Felicity, that only meant one thing. The heat of a blush began to creep up her neck.

"Oh, God no, not like that. I don't think he's even looked at another woman since my mom left," Laurel assured her. "He's not like that anyway, and you look too much like my sister."

"I do?" Felicity hadn't noticed any resemblance at all when she was looking at pictures of Lance family members that had been all over the papers following the yacht accident that had killed billionaire CEO Robert Queen, his son Oliver, and Oliver's date for that weekend, Sara Lance.

"Kind of," said Laurel. "She's—she _was_—young and blonde. And shorter than me," she added. "My point is, you have nothing to worry about on that score."

"Okay, good," Felicity said slowly. She didn't know how else to respond. At least she hadn't gone off on a babbling tangent about Detective Lance keeping his hands to himself or something.

"Checking up on me, Laurel?"

The young woman turned as Detective Lance approached. "Hey, Dad," she said. "Just introducing myself to your new partner."

"Just _warning_ my new partner," he grumbled.

"Now, Daddy," said Laurel, batting her eyelashes, "why on earth would I want to do that? Could it be because I know you too well?"

"Shouldn't you be getting back to work?" he asked, taking her elbow. "Let me walk you out."

Laurel turned and winked at Felicity before letting Detective Lance lead her from the squad room.


	2. Chapter 2--Call Waiting

_**(A/N: In answer to a couple of questions, yes, there will be Olicity. Of course there will be Olicity! But y'all have to be patient because I really dig the slow burn and I want this to parallel canon as much as possible. The other question was about the timeline. These first two chapters take place, as will be obvious when you read further, on the day Oliver's return from the dead hits the news.)**_

"We've caught a case."

Felicity swept her TARDIS mug off the desk and into her purse before standing to meet Detective Lance's dark eyes. She'd been staring at the mug since he'd walked his daughter out, trying to decide if she should leave it out or put it in a drawer.

"What kind of case?" she asked.

"Home invasion," Lance said. "I'm driving."

Felicity snatched up her purse and bounced after him. He crossed the room in just a few long strides, and she could see herself doing a lot of running to catch up in the future of this partnership. She made a mental note to stop avoiding cardio in her workout.

She followed Detective Lance through police headquarters to the back of the building. He greeted several officers by name but never introduced her. He didn't even check to see if she was keeping up. He signed out an unmarked vehicle, having an entire silent conversation with the sergeant on duty as he took the keys.

Squinting in the bright sun as they entered the motor pool parking lot, Felicity lugged her purse along. The handle of the mug secreted within was digging into her hip. She wished she'd just left it on her desk instead of freaking out, but it was far too late to do anything about it. The car Detective Lance went to was a hulking black SUV. As the locks clicked free, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn't worn a skirt.

Despite her sensible attire, getting into the SUV was problematic. Felicity wasn't tiny, but the vehicle dwarfed her and the running board was level with her knees. She had to brace her arms on the seat for leverage to climb up. Detective Lance, already settled behind the wheel, quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. With an aggravated sigh, she swung her purse onto the floor at her feet. The mug inside it clanked softly against her gun, even though the weapon was protected by a padded compartment.

"Detective Lance, Detective, or sir," he said as he put the SUV in gear. He pulled out of the parking space without a single glance at the view from the back-up camera. "We're not on a first-name basis, and you're my junior partner."

"Are you going to call me 'ma'am'?" she asked, pushing up her glasses.

"Detective, or Detective Smoak."

"Good, because 'ma'am' makes me feel like a spinster. One with a lot of cats. I only have one cat."

"A spinster?" he scoffed. "You're twenty-five."

She slid her eyes sideways to glance at him. She wasn't the only one who'd done some research.

"This scene we're heading to, it's in the Glades," he said gruffly.

"Okay."

The detective spared her a brief look before returning his gaze to the road. "You're not going to gasp, or even turn a little pale? Because I'm not walking in there with you hiding behind me, clutching my jacket."

Felicity shrugged. "My apartment is in the Glades. Well, it's more on the outskirts, but I think that counts. And I carry a gun."

She said it breezily like she was fearless, but just last night she'd gotten home well after dark. She speed-walked from her crappy parking spot beneath a broken streetlight to the front of her building with her gun in her right hand, covered by her long sleeve, and a high-powered Taser in her left.

"Why live there?" asked Lance. "You could afford better."

"I can't, actually," Felicity said. "I'm a tech nerd. I have a lot of equipment, and I'm always doing system upgrades. It's not cheap, so the lower rent helps."

He grunted. "Ever heard of Crispin Bayne?" he asked after a moment.

"Heard of him? Are you kidding me?" she gushed. "He's like the king of the nerds! He's a programming Jedi Master . . . Um, a Jedi Master is—"

"I know what it means," Lance said. "I'm not that out of touch."

"Of course you're not," Felicity agreed, quickly backtracking. "I didn't mean to imply—I mean, that is . . . Oh God, stop it," she said to herself. "Three, two, one." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Why are we talking about Crispin Bayne?"

"Well, apparently his home was just invaded."

"Here? Crispin Bayne lives here, in Starling City?"

"You know all about him, but you don't know that?" Detective Lance asked.

"No one knows," she replied. "He has this whole J.D. Salinger persona. Reclusive and mysterious."

"Reclusive, huh?" Lance grumbled. "This'll be fun, then."

Felicity didn't know what to say to that, but she was desperately trying to think of something. Before she could, Lance reached over and jacked up the volume on the police radio.

"—alive," an officer was saying. "It's all over the news."

Someone responded in static. A dispatcher told the officer to cut the chatter, but he wasn't finished. "Guess someone will have to tell Detective Lance."

Lance slapped at the volume knob, but Felicity could just barely make out the dispatcher saying, "Poor bastard."

"What was that about?" she asked. "Who's alive?"

His phone rang then. She recognized the ringtone as the theme from _COPS_. Felicity didn't say anything, but her eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline.

The detective snorted. "Yeah, it's a little on-the-nose. My daughter Sara put that on there after the last time I grounded her. To get back at me, I guess." He drew the phone from his jacket pocket and set it in one of the cup holders.

"Are you going to answer it?"

"I'm driving," he said. "I don't even look at it when I'm driving."

While the phone continued to ring, she did the math in her head. Sara Lance was twenty when the _Queen's Gambit_ disappeared in a storm off the coast of China. She probably wasn't grounded after she started college. That meant Detective Lance had left his ringtone unchanged for at least seven years. And the phone was newer than that—she recognized the model. He had to have transferred over the ringtone along with his contact list and other important information. It was sad and sweet, the kind of thing Felicity's own father might have done. Except Felicity wouldn't have gone onboard a yacht with her sister's über-rich boyfriend. She didn't have a boyfriend at all, certainly not an über-rich one, and she didn't have a sister anyway . . .

"Stop. Now," Lance said through clenched teeth.

Felicity's hand went to her lips. "Did I just say some of that out loud?"

"Yes." His hands gripped the wheel even tighter, like he was making a concerted effort to squeeze it instead of her throat. She was not unfamiliar with that kind of reaction in response to one of her rambles.

"Which part?" she asked.

"Does it matter?"

Felicity shrugged. Lance's phone rang again—he continued to ignore it, so she did too.

"I do that sometimes," she began to explain. "I get so wrapped up in my thoughts that I don't realize they're not thoughts anymore—they're words. And they just come out. I don't get the chance to neaten them up."

"You're honest," he said. "I'll give you that." But his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel didn't ease up.

The phone trilled out a short series of beeps.

"Voice mail alert?" Felicity asked.

Lance said nothing, but there was another beep. And another. Text message alerts.

"Wow, someone really wants to talk to you." She reached for the phone.

"Leave it," he growled.

Felicity snatched her hand back. She waited in silence for as long as she could, which wasn't very long, and then spoke up.

"Can I turn on the radio? The regular radio?" she asked. "If there's something to occupy my mind, I don't ramble as much."

"Fine," he replied. "But keep it turned down low. And no teenybopper crap. I heard enough of that raising two girls."

Felicity opened her mouth to say something indignant about her music preferences, but the truth was, she had a fair amount of teenybopper crap on her iPod. And the whole point was to stop rambling. She tuned the radio to a local news broadcast and twisted the volume knob ever so slightly until she could hear it.

"—breaking news that we brought to you about twenty minutes ago. The Queen family has just released a statement, which reads in part, 'While we are overjoyed at the miracle that is bringing Oliver back to us, we ask for the media and the public to respect our privacy and the privacy of the families who were not so fortunate as to the return of their loved ones."

Detective Lance snapped the volume knob right off the panel. Felicity casually reached into her purse, hand closing over her own phone. Her need to know was stronger than mere curiosity. She was pretty much an information addict, and in this case it seemed to vital to her new partnership that she learn as much as she could about what they'd just heard.

She quickly became lost in the internet browser on her phone, paging through article after article. They all basically said the same thing, though tones varied from dry to hysterical. A Chinese fishing boat had picked up a bearded, bedraggled man who had later walked into the U.S. Embassy in Shanghai, claiming to be Oliver Queen. He was currently on his way back to Starling City.

There weren't many details, and no answers to the questions zooming through her mind. How was his identity confirmed? Why was he returning now? Where had he been for the last five years? What had happened to the others on the yacht?

No pictures, either. No new ones. All the photos were from before the accident and showed Oliver Queen blond, cocky, and grinning. Felicity had no idea what the attraction was supposed to be. When she looked at his pictures, she just felt like slapping him.

"That grin makes you want to slap him, doesn't it?"

Felicity jumped at the sound of Lance's voice. She thumbed off her phone and looked around. They were in an underground parking structure with the engine off. How long had he been waiting for her to finish?

"That's exactly what I was thinking," she confessed.

"Good. Now if you can just rein in your mouth a little bit, we might get along." He clicked the locks free and got out easily.

Felicity dropped her phone into her purse and opened her door. To her surprise, there was Detective Lance, holding out his hand. She took the help rather than fall face-first onto the concrete so very far below.

He dropped her hand as soon as her feet hit the ground and walked away from her, heading toward the elevator.

Felicity slammed her door and ran to catch up. "Are you okay with this Oliver Queen business . . . sir?" she remembered to add.

Lance pinned her to the spot with a look that could have frozen lava.

"Okay, I'm just not going to ever ask you that again," she said quietly.


	3. Chapter 3--In the Dog House

**_A/N: Thanks to my beta, Mestizaa, for commas and motivations and just generally being encouraging. :D And if you're DYING for that first meeting, it will happen in the next chapter. It goes without saying that I don't own Arrow or these characters-just having fun playing with them._**

Chapter Three—In the Dog House

When they were back in the SUV, Felicity had wanted to explain that she'd just been flustered by meeting one of her idols (who'd turned out to be kind of a jerk, but still). She wanted to say that she was usually very professional, that it was her dumb luck that their first case together involved Crispin Bayne. But for once, she couldn't find the words. Lance stayed silent too, and it was a long drive back to the station. Her face flamed and her heart hammered as she replayed the terrible moment in her head.

Detective Lance never said anything to her directly, but the punishment began immediately and lasted for days. First, he had her do all the paperwork for the Crispin Bayne home invasion. It was an easy case. Bayne knew exactly who had broken in and what they were after—he even gave them the surveillance footage to prove it. Lance had her fill out the warrants and then told her to sit by the phone while he made the arrest alone. The paperwork took hours because it was all new to her and because she wanted to get it perfect.

He wasn't finished driving home his point yet. Over the next two days, Lance assigned her every mundane task he could think of, from schlepping files all over the building to cleaning out the microwave after someone's chili exploded, to acting as IT support for the entire unit. She'd thought her days of "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" were over.

When they came up in the rotation for the next case, Detective Lance insisted that she stay in the squad room and continue investigating Lt. Pike's laptop, which was running at a snail's made a fool out of herself at Crispin Bayne's. Somehow Detective Lance was able to take the startling news that Oliver Queen was alive and shove that down deep in some part of him that he didn't need for this investigation. He acted totally professionally, and Felicity . . . did not.

She did a fair amount of fangirling over Crispin Bayne himself. He was king of the nerds, after all. And the notoriously media-shy programmer turned out to be hot, in a pale, vampiric sort of way. But when Felicity turned quickly to distract herself from imagining him sinking his teeth into her neck, she spilled the coffee he'd offered her. It went everywhere, splashing across his tablet, which made her gasp in horror as it was top-of-the-line, and soaking into the pristine white carpet.

Bayne didn't shout or order her and Detective Lance to leave. What he did was much, much worse. He stared at Felicity for a long time, as if memorizing her face. Her cheeks burned as she used tissues from her purse to dab at the brown spots on the carpet. Then Bayne informed Detective Lance that he'd be sending a bill to the Starling City Police Department. He completely ignored Felicity for the remainder of their time in his apartment. He would take Detective Hilton with him instead, whose own partner was out sick. Hilton and Lance would look into the kidnapping and assault of Oliver Queen and Tommy Merlyn. Hilton and Lance would be invited into the Queen mansion, where no one would squeak and spill the coffee. And Felicity would just sit at her desk, emptying the browser cache and defragging the lieutenant's hard drive.

Lance was fuming when he and Hilton returned from the Queen residence. He slammed drawers and then stormed into the break room. Felicity was surprised at the amount of noise he made just by pouring a cup of coffee.

"What's that about?" she asked Detective Hilton as he was passing by her desk.

Hilton shrugged. "He held out for as long as he could, and then he lit into Oliver Queen. Got us thrown out."

Felicity frowned. "Will that hurt the case?"

"No. We know who attacked Queen and Merlyn. The bigger case is finding out who attacked the attackers."

She wanted to ask him more about that, but Lance came out of the break room then. He removed his notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket and tossed it on her desk. He nodded at Hilton. The other detective raised an eyebrow, but then he set down his own notebook next to Lance's. Felicity knew what that meant—make copies of the notes and start the paperwork. The punishment wasn't over yet.

The Queen/Merlyn kidnapping was fascinating. As she read the other detectives' notes, she seethed at her own awkwardness which had gotten her shut out of such a juicy case. Queen and Merlyn had been hit with tranquilizer darts and whisked out of an alley in the Glades, where they'd stopped to look at the factory Robert Queen had closed down years ago. While the kidnapping itself was interesting, the real story was what happened next.

While Tommy Merlyn remained unconscious, Oliver Queen claimed that a man wearing a green hood had attacked and killed the kidnappers. Two had died from gunshot wounds, what looked like friendly fire, and one had a broken neck. The coroner's preliminary results suggested that the man in the hood had done that with his bare hands.

Felicity could tell from Detective Lance's notes that he didn't much care why anyone would kidnap two spoiled young rich men. (That was easy—money.) He was more interested in the murder. What kind of guy could get the drop on three pros, and why would he kill them to protect Oliver Queen of all people?

Queen's description was vague, just a man in a hood, and he was probably still drugged at the time. Lance was completely focused on this mysterious, skilled murderer, but there was no evidence other than the eyewitness account. Felicity had to take work home that night. Her arms were full of files—she'd pulled old solved cases in order to use their forms as a template of sorts—and she was headed out the door when Detective Lance stopped her.

"We're up in the rotation again tomorrow," he said. "We've still got the hood guy case, but until there's a break, it's our turn for whatever comes up first."

She nodded. He'd barely spoken to her in two days. She'd forgotten how gravelly his voice sounded.

"And I've told the guys to quit bugging you, to just pick up the phone and call IT." He wasn't looking her in the eye anymore. "You're a detective, not a computer jockey. Right?"

"Right."

Message received. Her punishment was over. Or it would be as soon as she finished all the paperwork in her arms.


	4. Chapter 4--Blonds and Bullet Holes

_**(A/N: I know this is short, like all of my chapters, but I really wanted to get this one posted. Thanks for all the reads and reviews! I look forward to them, and I respond to every review. Some of them have even changed how I view this story and opened up some storytelling avenues that might not have occurred to me otherwise, so thank you! One last thing: if you squint really hard, there is a **_**Smallville_ easter egg in this chapter. :D)_**

Felicity woke at 7:30 the next morning to the rustling sounds of Jpeg, her cat, walking across the sea of paper spread over the coffee table. After showering and getting dressed, she only had time to measure out some food for Jpeg and then shove all her work stuff into a giant tote bag.

Her wardrobe choices still reflected her punishment status, she realized as she drove to work. She'd paired a peach button-down with a striped pencil skirt and low heels because she'd fully expected to sit at her desk all day. She'd probably be stuck there for a while anyway, finishing the work she'd fallen asleep in the middle of the night before.

After only five days in Major Crimes, Felicity had already established a routine. She locked her purse in a desk drawer, shoved the file-laden tote under the desk, and headed for the break room, carrying her TARDIS mug. The coffee was strong enough to peel paint and so bitter it could make a snowman cry, but it was coffee and it was free.

Carrying a steaming mug with Splenda and plenty of creamer, Felicity made her way back to her desk. Detective Lance wasn't in yet, she noticed as she pulled files from the tote bag. The papers were a jumbled mess. She'd have to sort it all out before she'd be able to tell how much work was left.

By lunchtime, Lance still hadn't shown up. Felicity finished her work and headed for the deli across the street. She was starving, and it seemed to take forever before she was setting her tray on the only empty table. She'd almost finished her French dip sandwich when a throat cleared in front of her.

"Felicity Smoak?"

She looked up. Oh God. It was—

"Hi. I'm Oliver Queen."

"Of course!" she said in a high-pitched tone that startled both of them. "I know who you are. You're Mr. Queen."

"No, Mr. Queen was my father."

"Right, but he's dead. I mean he drowned. But you didn't, which means you could come in here and listen to me babble. Which will end in three, two, one." She took a deep breath and let it out.

This wasn't the blond brat from the newspaper photos. For one thing, he wasn't blond anymore. His hair was darker and shorter. Stubble peppered his chin and upper lip, a five o'clock shadow on a sharp jaw line. And that little smile on his face—where had that come from? Wait. Had _she_ put it there, with her tactless ramble? He didn't call attention to it, either. He just smiled and continued the conversation. She definitely wasn't used to that.

"I'm having some trouble with my computer," he said, "and Detective Hilton told me that you were the person to come see."

Felicity glanced around, looking for Hilton, but she was distracted from her efforts when Oliver Queen—_Oliver Queen!_—set a laptop on the table in front of her lunch tray.

"I was at my coffee shop surfing the web," he explained, "and I spilled a latté on it."

She'd just taken a swig of Diet Coke, and she narrowly avoided spitting it everywhere. Any idiot could tell just by looking that a spilled latté wasn't the problem.

"Really," she said.

"Yeah."

She risked eye contact. His face was open, his blue eyes wide, giving the impression of innocence. Something about him made her want to believe him, even though evidence to the contrary was right in front of her.

She poked at the laptop. "'Cause . . . these look like bullet holes."

"My coffee shop is in a bad neighborhood," he replied.

Felicity tilted her head and half-rolled her eyes. He smiled at her. _That smile_. It wasn't blinding or anything, but it brought fire to her cheeks, and she felt her toes curl inside her shoes.

"If there is anything you can salvage from it," he continued, "I would really appreciate it."

She hummed in agreement. She couldn't actually speak, which was just fine with her. One ramble was more than enough.

He smiled again and walked away. Felicity watched him go, her mouth hanging open. It took her brain a few moments to resume normal functions. When he disappeared from view, she said under her breath, "_Wow_. In person, he is really . . . Wow."

Detective Hilton approached her table, and she managed to toss a folder over the bullet-ridden laptop just in time.

"I hope you don't mind," Hilton said, nodding his head in the direction Queen had gone. "When he said he had a computer problem and your name came up . . ."

"It's fine," she said. "But just this once. I already have a job, and it isn't tech support for tabloid stars." Nice comeback. It was exactly what she wished she could have said to Oliver Queen himself.

Hilton grinned. "The look on your face as he walked away would suggest otherwise." He tapped on the computer. "I'll owe you for this. I want to stay on the kid's good side in case he remembers anything more about the other night."

"What about Detective Lance?" she asked.

"Quentin doesn't think he _has_ a good side."

"Everyone has a good side." She tried to change the subject. "Any developments with the guy in the hood?"

There weren't. Unless Detective Lance's new obsession with the case counted as a development.

"That's just the way he is. He latches onto things, can't let them go," Hilton said. "But most of those cases get solved because of it."

Felicity could relate to that. The laptop full of bullet holes—it was a puzzle, a contest. She should pick up the laptop with the edges of her sleeves and turn it over to Detective Lance, but she knew she wouldn't. Curiosity was rising up from within her, and she wouldn't be able to rest until she learned what was on that computer and why it was in Oliver Queen's possession.


	5. Chapter 5--Doubt Truth to be a Liar

_**(A/N: Hopefully this slightly longer chapter will keep y'all going for a while. I need to re-watch some episodes before I can write more, and I really need to work on my novel. Anyway, this will give you a bit of Felicity's background, though it'll probably just raise more questions for now. And that's okay-gives me something to pay off later. :P So enjoy, and please review. Even if it's just to say you like it.)**_

Felicity was getting tired of taking work home. But a shot-up computer delivered by Oliver Queen was a lot more interesting than filling out reports and typing up notes. She set the laptop on the kitchen counter where the light was better and got her computer toolkit out of a drawer. Jpeg rubbed up against her legs and purred as she removed screws from the back panel with her smallest screwdriver.

She'd been taking computers apart since she was seven. In no time, she had the panel off and the hard drive out. The casing had cracked, and there was a big dimple on the underside of the computer where a bullet had hit but not penetrated. Salvaging the data would be a piece of cake.

Felicity set up the damaged core to download onto an external hard drive. She badly wanted to peek at the information downloaded from the laptop, but her poker face was terrible. When she showed Oliver Queen what had been on that computer, it would have to be for the first time. While the data transferred, she watched _Sherlock_,and baked and frosted a batch of sour cream cookies. They were the best cookies in her repertoire, and she hoped they'd go a long way toward smoothing things over with Detective Lance.

The next day, everyone was in the break room, crowded around the tray of cookies, when the back-from-the-dead billionaire strode into the squad room. Felicity saw him because she happened to be standing in the doorway, away from the feeding frenzy. It was easy for her to slip out unnoticed.

Oliver Queen looked pissed. He took her arm and steered her into the hallway.

"Why didn't you tell me you were a cop?" he demanded.

Her mouth dropped open. "I—I thought you knew."

"Do you really think I'd have brought you a laptop with bullet holes in it if I'd known you were a police officer?"

"Detective, actually," she said, fingering the gold badge clipped at her waist.

His expression changed from anger to incredulity.

"Don't look so shocked," said Felicity. "It's kind of insulting."

He tilted his head, giving her a bemused smile. The speed with which his emotions seemed to change was giving her whiplash.

"Aren't you kind of young to be a detective?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I went through the police academy after college. I spent maybe six months in uniform before they figured out I was good with computers. After two years in Cybercrimes, I moved to tech support for Internal Affairs."

His eyebrow quirked up. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a step down?"

"It was the only opening," Felicity said, "and I really wanted out of Cybercrimes."

"Then how did you go from Internal Affairs to here?"

He was leaning into her personal space now. It was kind of distracting. And annoying. She stepped around him and headed back toward the squad room, talking as she walked.

"I received the highest score they've ever had on the detective's exam. On my first try." She glanced over her shoulder to see that he was only two steps behind. "And I guess Detective Lance has burned a lot of bridges around here, so there aren't many people willing to work with him. I was."

He winced. "You work with Detective Lance? That's just . . . great."

She reached her desk and pulled out her chair. "So now you know what I've done for the last five years. What about you?"

A storm of emotions clouded his blue eyes. The weight of what she'd just said fell on her shoulders, and she dropped into her chair.

"Oh my God. I didn't think—I mean, you don't have to tell me—"

"Felicity." He held up a hand to cut her off. It was a big hand, callused, not soft like she'd have expected of the idle rich.

"This isn't the first time that's happened since I've been back," he said. "And it won't be the last. Now, do you have anything for me?"

"Oh, the computer!" She opened a drawer and pulled out the laptop from between some empty folders.

He grasped her wrist and locked eyes with her. "Not here."

"Oh, don't worry. No one'll see anything." When he let go, she pushed the laptop across the desk, holding the folder on top of it in place. "They're fighting over my cookies."

One corner of his mouth curved upward. "Could you get anything from it, or is it a lost cause?"

"Mr. Queen, when it comes to computers, I don't believe in lost causes."

"Is that a yes?" he asked. "And call me Oliver, not Mr. Queen."

Her nose scrunched up. "You said that before, didn't you?"

"I did." He snagged a chair from the desk across from hers and set it next to her. "Show me what you found."

Felicity pulled the external hard drive from her bag and connected it to her tablet. It seemed wiser than using her work computer.

"The hard drive was only cracked," she said. "Some of the data might be corrupted, but I doubt it."

Lines of code began to scroll across the screen of her tablet. "Hmm."

"What?" asked Oliver.

"Most of this is encrypted. I could probably crack it, but it would take a while."

"Is there anything you can show me now?" he asked.

Felicity scrolled down the list of encrypted file names. "Here's something." She tapped on a file, and it opened. "Huh. Looks like blueprints." She tilted the tablet toward him so he could see.

"Do you know what of?" he asked.

"The Exchange Building." She pointed at the words in the lower right corner.

"Never heard of it."

"It's where the UNIDAC Industries auction is scheduled to take place." She watched him stare blankly at the image. "I thought you said this was _your_ laptop."

"Yes," he said. It did not sound at all convincing, and it was so obviously untrue.

"If this is about Queen Consolidated and Walter Steele . . ." She laid her tablet on the desk and turned toward him. "Look, I don't want to get in the middle of some Shakespearean family drama thing."

If she thought he was looking blank before, now he really was. He knew he was missing something, and his gaze shifted around the room like he thought he could actually find it there.

"Mr. Steele marrying your mom," she prompted. "Claudius, Gertrude . . . Hamlet," she said, indicating him.

"I didn't study Shakespeare at any of the four schools that I dropped out of," said Oliver.

"Mr. Steele's trying to buy UNIDAC Industries," she explained, "and you've got a company laptop associated with one of the guys he's competing against."

"Floyd Lawton," Oliver supplied. He sounded absolutely certain, but Felicity knew he was wrong.

"No. Warren Patel." She pointed at the name associated with the blueprints file. "Who's Floyd Lawton?"

Oliver frowned in confusion. "He is an employee of Mr. Patel, evidently."

"Queen!" Detective Lance growled. "You better be here because you remembered something important about your case."

Oliver rose and returned the chair to where he'd gotten it. "Unfortunately not, sir. Miss Smoak was helping me with a computer problem." He tucked the laptop under his arm, keeping the folder in place that covered the bullet holes.

"That's Detective Smoak," Lance corrected him.

Felicity quickly disconnected the external hard drive and slipped it back in her purse.

Oliver nodded at her. "Thank you, Detective." He left the squad room, giving Lance a wide berth.

Her partner turned to her, eyebrows raised. "Computer problem?"

Felicity shrugged. "Detective Hilton mentioned my name."

He stepped away, then turned back, a half-worried, half-angry look on his face. "Don't fall under his spell, all right? Just don't."

Her eyes widened in surprise. "I wasn't even considering it."

"Good. Things with him never end well." He spun away from her and approached the bulletin board. He gazed at the police artist's sketch. "Now, we have a hooded man to track down."


	6. Chapter 6--Lucky Fortune

_**A/N: Thanks for your patience as this is a little later than usual. I had to re-watch an episode, which took a few tries thanks to a sketchy internet connection. And I had to get some more work done on my novel in order to justify the time I've spent on this fic over the last two months. :P Other things: any business talk in this chapter and subsequent chapters is b.s. I don't know anything about business. Cop stuff I know, not business. I also made up a name for that Chinese restaurant Lance always meets Sara in, because I wanted to use it in this chapter and the next. And thank you for all the reviews and favorites, follows and recommendations! I'm so grateful for all of it.**_

Chapter 6-Lucky Fortune

"Detective Smoak."

Felicity sat up straighter. "Yes, sir."

"Join me, please." Detective Lance indicated the empty space next to where he stood in front of the bulletin board.

She went over to the board. The case of the guy in the hood had exploded in the last few days. He'd gone after James Holder, a rich, slightly shady corporate type.

It had been Felicity's first murder scene, and her stomach began doing somersaults on the ride over. Fortunately for her, the dead man was floating facedown in his own pool, so she didn't really have to look at him. But something must have shown on her face. Detective Lance took one look at her, then sent her back into the penthouse to get witness statements from Holder's bodyguards.

Both men were being treated for arrow wounds by paramedics. They'd been attacked and then relieved of their guns. One man had lost consciousness briefly and never saw his assailant. The other described a tall man in leather, with a green hood pulled down low to cover most of his face. And a green arrow had been recovered from the scene, so obviously the hood guy was involved. But the autopsy told them that Holder had died from gunshot wounds, not arrow wounds. The bullets were sniper rounds, and they were poisoned. It was weird.

Just a couple of days later, Carl Rasmussen was shot, same M.O., but no arrows at the scene. Detective Lance was sure that the sniper and the hooded guy were two different people, but all the victims had gone up on the board anyway—the dead Queen kidnappers, Adam Hunt, James Holder, and Carl Rasmussen.

"I'm looking for connections," Lance said as Felicity gazed at the photos. "What do you see?"

She took a deep breath and let it out, attempting to let go of every conclusion she'd reached so far. But like every other time she'd looked at the board, her eyes had immediately been drawn to the picture of James Holder. It was a cheesy corporate headshot, nothing special, but for the first time, Felicity realized it was his name that was familiar to her, not his face.

"Hmmm."

"See something?" her partner asked.

She frowned. "Maybe."

Felicity returned to her desk and grabbed her tablet. She vaguely remembered reading the article there, as opposed to her work computer or her laptop. She pulled up her browser history and quickly scrolled past all the music videos she'd watched on YouTube the night before. There, she found the article. She skimmed it briefly and then returned to the bulletin board.

"Here," she said, handing the tablet to Detective Lance. She kept talking while he read the article. "The name James Holder sounded familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I remembered this article I read a couple of days before his murder. He's kind of shady, which is something he has in common with Rasmussen, but we already knew that."

Lance held the tablet out to her. She took it and continued without stopping for breath.

"What we didn't know is that he has something else in common with Rasmussen," she said. "They're both prospective buyers for UNIDAC Industries, and they were both murdered in the same way, presumably by the same person, _before_ the auction."

"Slow down," said Lance. "How do you know all this? What the hell is UNIDAC Industries? And what's this auction all about?" he asked, pointing at the tablet in her hands.

Felicity shrugged. "I keep up on tech news. UNIDAC Industries was a tech giant, but bad management drove it into receivership, and now the company is up for auction."

"And both these guys were going to bid on it?" Lance tapped his fingers on Holder's and Rasmussen's photos.

"A few others too," she said. "But only one of them is in Starling City right now."

"I noticed," said Lance. "Walter Steele, head of Queen Consolidated."

"He could be a target," said Felicity.

"He could be the _next_ target," Lance said. He sighed heavily. "Much as I hate dealing with that family, I don't want anyone's death on my conscience. I'll have to go that damn mansion again and warn them."

"Do you want me to go with you?" Felicity asked. The idea both appealed to and repelled her at the same time. She was curious about the Queens and Mr. Steele, but she was worried about being sabotaged by her inexperience and nervous babble.

Lance shook his head. "I'll take Hilton with me. I need you here, digging deeper into this auction thing. This shooter isn't the one pulling the strings. Someone's funding him and feeding him targets."

While Detective Lance went on his unpleasant errand, Felicity did what little digging she could. She was hampered by police resources and legality. She had the skills to do much more, maybe even to identify the shooter, but she couldn't accomplish it without leaving a trace. There would be a whisper, a footprint, something that could be traced back to her. She wouldn't risk her career and the prosecution of multiple murders just to impress her new partner and speed along their case.

Lance and Hilton returned from the Queen mansion in much the same attitude as before, with Hilton rolling his eyes and Detective Lance stomping into the break room to noisily pour himself a cup of coffee.

"What happened?" Felicity asked Hilton. "Did he go toe to toe with Oliver Queen again?"

Hilton shook his head. "Moira Queen this time."

"Yikes," she muttered.

"You know why he didn't want you to go, right?"

Felicity shrugged. "He needed me here," she said, "not that I was able to do any good."

The detective pulled up a chair and sat, leaning one elbow on her desk. "You shouldn't take it personally," he said. "It _is_ personal, but it's about him, not you."

"I'm listening."

"I don't think there's anyone in this world Quentin hates more than Oliver Queen," said Hilton. "Queen is the worst thing that ever happened to the Lances, and Quentin wants you as far away from him as possible. He's trying to protect you."

Felicity frowned. "Why? I was under the impression that he didn't like me very much."

"He doesn't like _anyone_ very much, but he likes you enough," Hilton said. "And even if he didn't he wouldn't have thrown you to the wolves. You're his partner."

"Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out this whole partner thing," Felicity confessed.

"Give it time and you will." Hilton stood up. "The one thing you've got to remember is loyalty. Your partner above everyone else. Even yourself."

Felicity swallowed hard as he walked away. That was a big responsibility, especially when your partner was a handful. The corners of her mouth quirked upward in a wry smile. Lance would probably say the same thing about her.

With Walter Steele now aware of the potential threat on his life, there was little more the police could do in the few days leading up to the auction. Felicity had submitted a request to access Interpol, but it was based on nothing but a hunch, and the bureaucratic wheel ground slowly.

When she was in Internal Affairs, she'd worked more independently and cut through the red tape with the blessing of her superiors. If she'd still been IA, she could have expedited her own request, but it would have been at the expense of her own well-being and peace of mind. Not worth it.

At home, her fingers itched to hack Interpol. So much so that she'd turned to all kinds of distractions, most recently by rewriting code so that she could beat the ridiculously hard level in Candy Crush that she'd been stuck on for weeks. She was in the middle of that coding the night before the auction when her phone began to buzz. Almost finished typing in a long string of commands, she ignored the phone until it demanded her attention by vibrating its way off the coffee table. She picked up the call and put it on speaker so she could continue to type.

"Yo, homey. What up?" she said.

" 'Scuse me?" inquired a gravelly voice on the other end.

"Detective Lance!" Felicity shoved her laptop aside and snatched up the phone. "I'm so sorry! That was not professional of me at all. I didn't check the caller ID since I just assumed it was my friend Amy because she's the only one who calls me this late, and that's just how we talk to each other, but—"

"Take a breath, Smoak."

She did. Several breaths, in fact, which gave him the chance to speak before she could tear off on another ramble.

"We need to meet," he said. "There's an all-night Chinese place on Second Avenue. Good tea. You know it?"

"Yeah," she said. "But it's kind of late. You don't want to talk about it at work tomorrow?"

"No, and I don't want to go into it over the phone either," said Lance. "When I left the station tonight, I had a run-in with a suspect."

"We have a suspect?"

"Yeah, our false lead in the sniper case. Shoots arrows, wears a green hood."

"Oh my God," Felicity breathed. "What happened?"

"Second Avenue. Throw on a jacket and get over here," her partner said. "The place is called Tang's Lucky Fortune Diner. Look for the red awning."

"Got it, sir. I'll be there in ten."


	7. Chapter 7--Tea and Sympathy and CVS

_**A/N: Last update for at least a week! Sorry, my sweets. But this is now over 10,000 words. How much have I written on my novel in comparison? Maybe 2000. So I need to take some time to focus on that. I really wanted to get all the drama from the auction in this chapter, but then CVS happened. :P Enjoy it, though. The drama will be in the next chapter.**_

Chapter 7—Tea and Sympathy and CVS

It was late enough that Felicity was creeped out as she scrambled from streetlight to streetlight, making her way toward her car. She kept reminding herself that she had a gun and she knew how to use it.

Second Avenue was close enough to be a fairly short drive but far enough out of the Glades that she didn't feel she needed to keep a death grip on her purse with one hand on the zipper. She slipped it into a parking spot one door down from the red awning, grabbed her purse, and headed for the diner.

The Lucky Fortune Diner smelled like burnt sugar and fried rice. Its interior was dimly lit, with few tables and a long counter. Detective Lance sat at the counter, midway down, a delicate handle-less in teacup in his large hand. He looked up as she approached, and indicated the stool next to his. She slid onto the round seat and hung the straps of her purse over her knee.

"Tea?" Lance pushed an empty cup toward her.

She shrugged. "Sure."

He poured from a cast-iron teapot. The liquid was light green with a sickly yellow cast to it, but steam rose in white curls from the spout and the cup, and she was cold. She'd thrown on a fleece jacket over her pajamas, and it wasn't enough to keep out the night's chill. She wrapped her hands around the cup and breathed in the steam.

"Were you serious?" Felicity finally asked him. "About the guy in the hood?"

Lance rolled his eyes. "Would I have dragged you out of bed otherwise?" He gave her clothing a pointed look and snorted.

She knew she looked ridiculous with her hot pink fleece topping off her bacon pajamas and her feet shoved into a grimy pair of green Crocs. She hoped no one looked too closely at her socks. They had lobsters all over them, lobsters in boiling pots, wearing shades and holding wineglasses.

"You said to throw on a jacket and get over here," Felicity said. "So I did. Are you going to tell me why?"

"I said I had a run-in with the hood guy. I meant it literally." Lance turned his head to show her a red mark on his cheek that was darkening into a bruise.

Felicity's hand reached out without her consent, but she quickly drew it back and took a gulp of her tea. The heat and the bitterness made her cough, and it was a few moments before she regained her composure.

"So he was confrontational," her partner continued. "Slammed me onto the hood of a cruiser and growled in my ear."

"What did he say?" she asked.

"He practically solved the damn case for us," Detective Lance said. "He somehow made the connection that the shooter's targeting these possible buyers, and he thinks he's identified the guy."

"What? How? Who is it?"

"The man in the hood says Interpol calls him Deadshot, but his real name is Floyd Lawton."

Felicity's head snapped up at the name she'd last heard fall from the lips of Oliver Queen. It took everything she had to school her features into a neutral expression.

"According to him, this Deadshot was hired by a guy named Warren Patel, and he's going to target the auction tomorrow night," Lance continued.

Another familiar name, the name tied to a computer riddled with bullet holes. She stared hard into her teacup.

"Then—and this is the best part—he asked for help," said Lance.

Felicity let her jaw drop, grateful for the distraction. "The hooded guy? What does he want?"

"He said that any one of these buyers at the auction could be a target," Lance explained. "He can't protect them all, especially not in a space that big, whatever the hell that means."

Her relief at moving her thoughts away from what Oliver Queen had said to her was gone. "The Exchange Building," she said. "That's where the auction will be held. And he's right—it's huge."

In her mind's eye, she could see the blueprints. Would they be useful? She still had the copied hard drive, but she wouldn't be able to explain how she'd gotten it.

Lance refilled his teacup. "He also mentioned the poisoned bullets, which is the only thing he said that wasn't news to me." He glanced over at her. "How come he beat you to this Deadshot guy? I thought you were some kind of savant when it came to computers."

"I'm the best," Felicity said without guile or arrogance. "But I'm also a cop, so I can only go so far without breaking the law."

Detective Lance huffed.

"I know I could have uncovered the identity of the shooter," she continued, "but it would have involved doing things anywhere from slightly shady to downright illegal." She looked up from her tea and held his gaze. "You know anything I could have found that way would be inadmissible in court. It could have sunk the case entirely."

He nodded. "I kind of figured . . . but, for the record, could you have done it?"

"Absolutely," she declared.

The sudden silence between them allowed her fear to rush back in, fear of her own slightly shady (and possibly illegal) activities on behalf of Oliver Queen being discovered. What did it mean? How did he fit into all this? His only connection besides the laptop was the fact that potential buyer Walter Steele was his stepfather.

Lance sat up and slapped his cup on the counter a little too loudly. Felicity jumped, but it was the jolt she needed to pull her out of the thoughts that had been dangerously close to the tip of her tongue.

"So what's the next step?" she asked brightly, then immediately followed it up with a massive yawn.

Lance half-smiled "Sleep, obviously. Then we'll need to get the goods on this guy Patel, at least enough for an arrest warrant. After that, we'll get a team together to cover the auction tomorrow night. Nail this dirtbag before he has a chance to shoot anyone else."

"'We'?" Felicity asked.

"Yeah, you and me. Who else?"

She shrugged.

"You're my partner, Smoak." He nudged her arm. "We're past that Crispin Bayne thing."

Felicity smiled, but it quickly reversed itself into a frown as something else occurred to her. "So . . ." she began slowly, drawing out the word. "We're helping the hooded guy. The hooded guy who's had a hand in at least three deaths."

"The way I see it, _he_ helped _us_," said Detective Lance. "He gave us the names. But I haven't forgotten that he has blood on his hands. He has to answer for that, but we need to catch the shooter first."

The diner's owner was sweeping the floor and sighing noisily. Felicity had no idea what the place's hours were, but it seemed like they should take the hint. Lance must have come to the same conclusion. He walked her to her car, which she found annoying. It was an empty gesture considering how close she'd parked to the restaurant. She was also annoyed that she'd been dragged away from Candy Crush at 10:30 at night. And was annoyed that a creep wearing a hood had solved their case by doing the one thing she couldn't allow herself to do: access Interpol.

The next day, Felicity left her apartment early in order to catch Detective Lance at home. He still lived in the decent-sized house he'd once shared with his wife and daughters. As she climbed the front steps, she could almost feel the quiet loneliness of large, empty rooms. The ringing doorbell echoing inside the house only reinforced the impression.

Lance threw open the door, a snarly expression on his face. She took a step back, thinking this had been a really bad idea, and almost fell down the stairs. He caught her elbow and drew her in.

"Get in here, Smoak," he grumbled. "My neighbors will start wondering why a divorced man with grown daughters has a blonde babysitter showing up at his door first thing in the morning."

"'Babysitter'?" Felicity mouthed silently.

"Now, what are you doing here?" he asked after he'd closed the door behind them. "Either you're quitting or you're propositioning me."

"The answers to all of those are, 'I'm here to help you,' 'No,' and 'Ew,'" she said, ticking them off on her fingers. "I mean, not ew, but—I am absolutely not propositioning you. You're my partner, and you're old enough to be my father. I mean, sure, I like older men, but not _that_ much older—"

"Smoak," said the detective. "Why don't you stop now before I have a chance to get really offended?" He didn't look mad yet, but he wasn't smiling either. "Why is it you think I need help?"

She rose on tiptoe and reached up (_way_ up) to take his chin in her hand. She turned his head to the right so she could see the bruise that the Hood had given him.

"That's why," she said, dropping her hand and lowering herself onto her feet again. "Have you looked in a mirror this morning?"

He shrugged. She didn't think so. His jaw was still grizzled with yesterday's stubble, and he had crazy Muppet hair.

"Still getting ready for work," he said.

"Well, your face has a giant, puffy, purple mark on it," she replied. "You can't walk into work like that and not expect people to ask questions."

"I wasn't planning on telling anyone how I actually got it. I'm a decent liar."

"But I'm not," Felicity said. "You've heard me—I'm honest to a fault. If someone asks me directly, I have no idea what will come out of my mouth."

"That could potentially become a problem," Lance pointed out.

"I know, and I'll work on it," she said. "But for today, we need to cover that up."

Lance turned away, mumbling that surely Laurel or Dinah had left some make-up laying around, but Felicity grabbed his elbow. He turned back to face her.

"If we don't want anyone to ask questions," she said, "we have to do this right. Where's the nearest drugstore?"

Felicity thought browsing the CVS make-up aisle with Detective Lance at 7:30 in the morning definitely qualified as one of her life's more surreal experiences. It was hard to bite back a laugh as she held up different shades of foundation and concealer to his face.

Lance insisted on paying for the items himself. "This stuff could come in handy later," he said.

"Do you plan on getting beat up by hooded guys a lot?" she asked.

"He did not beat me up," her partner replied. "Be nice to me, or I won't get you anything when I stop at Starbucks."

"_You_ be nice to _ me_, or I won't fix your face," she retorted.

The half-overcast morning light sucked, but the parking lot was mostly empty. Lance sat on the opened tailgate of his SUV while she used the cosmetics to make his bruise disappear. She took a step back to examine her handiwork.

"Well, it's still kind of puffy," she said. "If anyone asks, you can just tell them you didn't get much sleep."

Detective Lance reached his hand up to his face, but Felicity slapped it away.

"Will it stay covered up all day?" he asked.

"I hope so, but it's not like a charcoal drawing you can spray with fixative. You'll have to be careful. No touching. And no sweating if you can help it."

They got back in their own cars and returned to the road. Lance followed her, then pulled off within sight of a Starbucks sign.

Her phone buzzed.

"Order?" he asked before she could say anything.

"A peppermint mocha with an extra shot of espresso," she said. "Without whipped cream. The whipped cream always melts before I get to work, and it leaves a layer of oil on top, which is just gross."

"Got it."

No one at the station seemed able to notice that Lance was sporting a bruise under a thick yet artfully applied layer of make-up. In fact, the desk sergeant remarked about how good he looked, that he must be getting more sleep. Felicity took that as a compliment on her skills. She hadn't just hidden the bruise—she'd improved the canvas.


	8. Chapter 8--Hit and Miss

_**(A/N: You all have been so patient! Thanks for all the reviews, favorites/follows, and encouragement. I hope not to wait as long between this chapter and the next. I'm done with setting up, and I'm eager to bring on the Olicity. :P Remember, if you're feeling Olicity-deprived, you can read my one-shot series, Quotable, which is pure, unadulterated Olicity fluff.)**_

**Chapter 8-Hit and Miss**

Felicity had never had a busier day. She and Lance spent most of the morning gathering enough on Warren Patel to get an arrest warrant. There was a meeting with Lt. Pike, and then another with the captain. It was a little intimidating, but by then they'd confirmed all the hooded vigilante's information, including checking with Interpol (legally) about Deadshot. Building a case to bring down an international assassin was a big deal.

She was tired at the end of the work day, but the auction was still to come, and before that, the strategy session with the strike team. Felicity drank three cups of coffee during the session. She had to make a pit stop on the way to the car afterward, but it was an even trade since she already felt more alert than she had in hours.

At first, Lance had wanted her on the perimeter, but he capitulated after a brief argument an instantly regretted jab on her part that she wasn't his daughter.

"Fine, then," he'd groused. "If you're going in, then you're going on the team that will arrest Patel."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand.

"No more arguing, Smoak. Them's the rules."

"What about Detective Hilton?" she asked. "You already put him on the team to grab Patel."

"And there he'll stay," said Lance. "Someone's got to keep an eye on you, rookie."

"I'm _not_ a rookie," she said, raising her voice. Then she remembered they weren't alone in the conference room. She dropped her tone a few notches. "I'm not a rookie, and there is no reason for you to relegate me to the background."

He raised his hand and then let it fall. "You're not a rookie cop, but you're a rookie detective. Like it or not, you're the new kid on the block, and I am not gonna put the newbie smack in the middle of danger on a major case. You're going with Hilton to arrest Patel. End of discussion."

She sighed noisily. "This partnership is really going to suck if you don't trust me."

"It's not about trust, Detective," he said on his way to the door. "It's common sense."

So Felicity donned her Kevlar and climbed into an SUV driven by Detective Hilton and crammed with members of the strike team. No one spoke on the drive to the Exchange Building except for Hilton, who occasionally murmured into the radio. She was grateful for the opportunity to seethe at Lance in silence.

It didn't matter what he said, what excuses he made. It all boiled down to him not trusting her to be able to handle herself in this kind of high-pressure, dangerous situation. And okay, she hadn't exactly proven herself capable yet, what with almost puking at the Holder crime scene, and the Crispin Bayne debacle. But they were _partners_. Her and Detective Lance, not her and Hilton. They should be working together, and the fact that they weren't felt like a betrayal.

Detective Lance was in charge when they reached the perimeter, barking orders in person and into his radio. Felicity was just another cog in the machine, she realized.

The auction hadn't started yet, but cocktail hour was in full swing. Felicity smoothed down her ponytail and followed Hilton, keeping just a step ahead of the uniformed officers accompanying them. She spared a backward glance and saw Detective Lance approach Oliver Queen. _Oliver Queen_. What was _he_ doing there? She stopped in her tracks, and one of the officers stumbled into her. He gave her a dirty look. She jogged a few steps to catch up to Hilton. Figuring out that little mystery would have to wait.

They found Warren Patel in one of the building's offices. He went into custody without incident. Hilton even let Felicity cuff him once she blabbed that she hadn't cuffed anyone since she was in Cybercrimes. Thank goodness she'd stopped herself before saying _why_ she hadn't. Then all of their radios exploded with chatter.

The call of shots fired was the loudest and most urgent. What followed was mostly gibberish to Felicity's ears. She'd learned all the codes in the police academy, but each officer was assigned a code and the various teams all had designations. Hilton directed the uniformed officers to hustle Patel out of the building and into a cruiser. Then he nodded at Felicity to come with him.

The lobby was in chaos. A waiter with a hole in his chest lay amidst a sea of broken glass, spilled champagne, and blood. Tons of dressed up people were screaming, hiding under tables and behind planters. Felicity spotted Lance standing up and helping a tall man to his feet. It was Walter Steele, the CEO of Queen Consolidated. They were very close to the waiter who had been shot. Taking in the whole scene, she saw a door on the far side of the room just closing. Her instinct was to go to it, to see who'd just left. But Detective Lance beckoned to her.

"What happened?" she asked him.

His eyes were a little wild, his hair mussed. "He took the shot," said Lance. "I was a little faster." He nodded at Mr. Steele, then cut his eyes over to the dead waiter.

"Thank you for saving my life, Detective," said the older man in a crisp British accent. "If you'll excuse me, I need to find my wife and stepdaughter."

"Of course," Lance replied. "We'll need you back here at some point to make a witness statement, but I think I saw your bodyguard take them that way." He pointed toward the other end of the lobby, and Felicity's gaze followed.

Bodyguard? The man with his hand on Moira Queen's shoulder sure looked like one. His arms were huge. But if he was Mr. Steele's bodyguard, why would he have left the man's side in order to protect his family? She frowned. Mr. Steele must have ordered him to. That's the only thing that made sense.

Felicity was at the Exchange Building long past midnight, taking witness statements and running interference between Detective Lance and all the rich people who were angry that their little soiree/business auction had exploded into a crime scene. Deadshot had fled the scene, leaving behind a small pool of his own blood and one dead officer. How the sniper had gotten injured was a mystery, since the cop didn't have a chance to fire his own weapon.

Through bleary, tired eyes, she watched as the Queen/Steele family departed. Moira Queen-Steele's thank-you's to Detective Lance were frosty, not that Felicity could blame her. One life-saving moment couldn't exactly erase their history. She looked for Oliver and the bodyguard, but they were nowhere to be seen.

When Lance told her to go home at 2:45 in the morning, she didn't protest. She got a uniformed officer to drive her back to the station, where she shed her Kevlar and quickly gathered her things to head home. Thank God there was an empty parking space right in front of her building. Felicity drove into it and stumbled into her apartment.

Her shirt was wrinkled and soaked with sweat, and her ponytail was miles from neat. Jpeg rubbed against her legs, alternately purring and loudly squawking to be fed. Once that was taken care of, she stripped off her work clothes and stepped into the shower. A soak in the tub sounded more enticing, but she had to be up and awake in just four hours. A bath would relax her too much—she'd just ended up sleeping through her alarm.

After twisting her wet hair into a braid, she threw on her bacon pajamas and fell into bed. Jpeg jumped up beside her and mashed himself against her back, purring. But when Felicity closed her eyes, she only saw the dead waiter. The blossom of red on his white jacket. His hand splayed over broken glass. She shook her head. She was in Major Crimes now—she'd have to find some way to cope with all the death she was going to encounter.

She gave up on sleep after an hour. Plied with coffee and ice cream, which seemed the only sensible thing to eat at 4:15 a.m., Felicity used her tablet and her mad internet skills to learn everything she could about Oliver Queen, and to try to identify his bodyguard. With the latter, she had no real starting point, just a face she knew she'd recognize if she saw it again. Or those massive arms. But he was a ghost, for all she could tell. He must have been a new addition to the entourage, or he would have shown up in recent photos. Since his return, Oliver had gotten very good at giving the media the slip, so there wasn't much to be found online after the initial publicity and a few snaps of him out partying with Tommy Merlyn.

With a yawn, she rolled her head back and forth, working the kinks out of her neck. It was time to get dressed for work.


	9. Chapter 9--To Hack or Not to Hack

_**(A/N: I know this isn't the most exciting chapter, but I have a lot to cover from these episodes, and it just felt like a good place to end the chapter. Do not despair. Chapter 10 is already underway.)**_

**Chapter 9-To Hack or Not to Hack**

When she arrived at police headquarters the next morning, Felicity went straight to the break room for coffee. She filled her TARDIS mug to the brim, dumped in a mess of cream and sugar without bothering to measure or even let her eyes focus properly, and stumbled to her desk. She was surprised to find Laurel Lance standing next to it.

"Um, hi," Felicity said to her. "Can I h—" She let loose a yawn so big that it felt like her face split in half. "Sorry. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Just waiting for my father to show up," the woman said. "Is that a square mug?"

"Yeah, it is," said Felicity. "It's the TARDIS, and the TARDIS appears as a police box, so . . . square mug."

"What you just said made no sense, Smoak. You better drink down that coffee. You need it."

Felicity turned around to see Detective Lance approaching. He was carrying a tall Starbucks cup, and there was a spring in his step that made her feel like snarling. He had to have gotten less sleep than she did, but he was freshly shaven and his hair was tamed and he was grinning. Felicity wasn't sure she could walk a straight line just then, let alone smile.

"So how much sleep did you not get last night, Dad?" Laurel asked. "And how much coffee have you already had?"

"So much coffee," said Lance. "If you cut me right now, I would bleed coffee. Detective Smoak here is clearly running behind."

"But it's a square mug," Laurel said, frowning. "How do you drink from it?"

"Very carefully," Felicity replied. She maneuvered around them and sank into her chair. Her stomach rumbled, and she took a big gulp of coffee to cover up the sound. Too much ice cream at the crack of dawn.

"So what brings you to my workplace, daughter?" Lance asked.

"I wanted to ask you about the Declan case."

Felicity's ears perked up. She sipped at her coffee and pulled out her tablet. She knew about the Declan case—everyone did. She'd seen the story on the news about five times while she was getting ready for work. Peter Declan was scheduled to be executed soon. He'd been sentenced to death for killing his wife in their daughter's bedroom.

"Peter Declan? It wasn't my case, but everyone knew about it. What can I tell you?"

"I heard his wife was about to blow the whistle on her boss before she died," Laurel said. "Was that angle ever pursued in the case?"

"Yeah, Declan told the cops that his wife met with her supervisor and raised her concerns, but the detectives talked to her supervisor." Lance squinted. "Istook. Matt Istook was his name. Anyway, he said that meeting never took place. And the evidence against Declan was solid."

Laurel seemed satisfied with that information. She said goodbye to her father and left.

The day was a blur of paperwork on the attempted assassination of Walter Steele and the murders they'd pinned on Deadshot. Felicity drank so much coffee that her hands started to shake, and she still felt as if she was barely functioning. Then Detective Lance got a phone call, and she watched his eyes go from tired to blazing with anger. He mumbled a "thanks" and ended the call.

Felicity arched her eyebrow in a silent inquiry.

"I need to pay my daughter a visit," he said. "I'll be back in a few." He practically ran from the squad room.

For the next ten minutes, Felicity debated whether or not to hack Detective Lance's phone to find out who'd called him. Did her concern outweigh what was a massive betrayal of trust? Did her concern outweigh illegal activity? She juggled these questions while pacing behind her desk, while buying a sugary soda from the vending machine, and while visiting the ladies' room. In the end, she'd taken too much time thinking over. Detective Lance returned after twenty minutes, looking more furious than when he'd left.

"I take it that didn't go well," she ventured.

"No, it did not." He dropped into his chair. "My daughter is lying to me. She walked in here this morning, and she lied to my face. We weren't—" He scrubbed a hand over his face. "We weren't supposed to do that. When her mother left, when it was just us, we agreed to be honest with each other. But she lied to me. She's neck-deep in the Peter Declan case."

Felicity frowned. "But . . . isn't that case closed? Isn't he the one who's going to be executed at the end of the week?"

"That's the one," Lance said. "But Laurel's got it in her head that he's innocent, and she's on a mission now. She won't let it go."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Felicity asked. She gulped down some more coffee while she waited for an answer.

"It's . . . if he's truly innocent, that's good. But this whole thing is bad. So bad."

She had a feeling there was more to the story than what he'd told her. She was starting to wish she'd gone ahead and hacked his phone.

Felicity spent the rest of the day on paperwork. Lance made an effort, but it was pretty clear his thoughts were elsewhere. Eventually he gave up all pretense of trying to help and went down to the records room to look at the Peter Declan files. By six o'clock, Felicity was pretty sure she'd finished everything and was clearing off her desk when the squad room began to buzz. She went to the break room to rinse out her mug and pulled aside the first person she saw, some vice detective.

"What's going on?" she asked him.

He must have just come off an undercover assignment because he badly needed a shave and he smelled like he'd been hiding behind a Dumpster. He swiped a sleeve across his nose and sniffed.

"Riot," he said. "Iron Heights."

"The prison?" she said like an idiot. Of course the prison. There was nothing else in Starling City called Iron Heights.

"Yeah," the detective said. "Chances are, someone from your squad will be called out before this is over."

Meaning, someone will be murdered before this is over. Felicity couldn't suppress an involuntary shiver. She forgot all about rinsing her coffee mug and returned to her desk. She gathered up her things, not really knowing what else to do. It wasn't like she could hang around, waiting for an inmate to shiv another. Was it shiv? Or was it shank?

As she pondered the prison lingo, Detective Lance stalked into the squad room. She couldn't tell if he was furious or terrified, or both. He strode right up to her desk and snapped his fingers. They were definitely going to have a conversation about that later, when he wasn't looking so scary.

"Smoak," he said like it was a command. "Let's go."

She grabbed her purse and dropped her mug into it. "Where to?" she asked.

"Iron Heights. Laurel's there."


	10. Chapter 10--Where Your Loyalty Lies

_**(A/N; Holy cow, this chapter turned out to be a beast. I'm totally exhausted and not feeling well, so I apologize for any typos I may have missed by not reading it over. Much thanks to thatmasquedgirl, who looked up some dialogue for me. Ugh. I need a nap now.)**_

**Where Your Loyalty Lies . . . and Lies and Lies**

Detective Lance drove his personal car to Iron Heights, at speeds that would make a NASCAR driver nervous. He wasn't talking, and they had no police radio to tell them what was happening at the prison. Honestly, Felicity wasn't really sure why she was accompanying him on this trip. If it was about his daughter, then it was personal and not her place. If it was about a potential Major Crimes case, they should have taken a car from the motor pool and gotten radios and maybe even backup. She had her gun in her purse, but she didn't want to go into the prison unless she absolutely had to.

The guards at the outer gate were preoccupied, one on the phone, the other on the radio. The guy on the radio leaned out of the booth, glanced at the gold shield Lance held up, and waved them on. Inside the gate, it appeared to Felicity as if chaos reigned, guards running everywhere, SCPD officers mixing with SWAT teams, and civilian prison employees here and there. But they had to have trained for this, with contingency plans in place.

Lance drove as close to the main building as he could get, nearly rear-ending an ambulance. An _ambulance_. Her stomach flipped.

"How do you know Laurel's in there?" she asked.

"She told me she was going to meet with Declan." He flung open his door and got out, not bothering to shut it behind him.

Felicity got out of the car and shut her door. She walked around the front of the vehicle and ducked her head into the driver's side. She took the keys from the ignition, pocketed them, and closed the door. Then she hustled to follow her partner.

"Dad!" Laurel ran to her father. She looked . . . surprisingly okay for having escaped a prison riot. Her tear-stained face and the shock blanket draped over her shoulders were the only indicators that she'd just survived a traumatic experience.

"Laurel, sweetie. What are you—" Lance crushed his daughter in a frantic embrace.

"I'm all right," said Laurel, pulling back a bit.

"You sure?"

Laurel hugged Detective Lance again. Felicity felt increasingly uncomfortable. Other people's emotional family stuff was awkward and weird. Family stuff _and_ a new partnership were doubly weird.

"I'm sorry about what I said to you." Laurel brushed away a tear.

"Yeah, well, you were right," said Lance. "Ankov just copped to Camille Declan's murder. We got the wrong guy."

Felicity's mouth dropped open. Who was Ankov? And Peter Declan really was innocent?

"Now listen to me, Laurel," Detective Lance continued. "I'm right too. I'm right about him. He's dangerous. He's outside the law."

Now who was he talking about?

"I know. He's a killer," Laurel replied. "There's something inside of him that's . . . it's not human. The things that I've seen, I—it was awful."

As she turned away from the moment of vulnerability, a flash of movement on the rooftop caught Felicity's eye. A hooded figure turned away and then disappeared into the shadows. The vigilante. She'd been staring at the police sketch of the defined jaw line below that hood for days now. What was he doing at the prison?

Lance put his arm around Laurel and began walking her toward the car. "Let's get you home, sweetie. How'd he get into that prison anyway, huh? A grown man in an outfit and a hood. That kind of stands out a little, doesn't it?"

Felicity couldn't keep quiet any longer. "The vigilante? He was here?"

Laurel eyed Felicity, then turned back to her father. "He actually wasn't wearing the outfit this time. He was in a prison guard uniform and a ski mask."

Lance stared.

"What?" Laurel asked.

"Nothing. I just had an idea. Get in the car, both of you."

"Bossy," Felicity mumbled as she drew the keys from her pocket and handed them to the detective. She got in the back seat as Lance fussed over his daughter, going so far as to buckle her in himself.

Felicity waited to speak until she could see the prison in the rear-view mirror. Then all the questions she'd be hanging onto began tumbling out.

"So when were you going to tell me any of this?" she asked, glaring at the back of his head. Muppet hair again. "The Declan case, the new confession, the fact that your daughter is working with the vigilante that's been killing people—"

"Was," Lance said. "She's not anymore. That's done." He glanced over at Laurel. "Right, sweetie?"

"He's a killer," Laurel reiterated. "I wasn't sure about him when he first approached me, but seeing him inside that prison left no doubt in my mind. He would have killed that inmate if I hadn't stopped him, and the look in his eyes when I did—" She shuddered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself.

"I'm just saying," Felicity continued. "It would have been nice to know this stuff before now. Well, not nice because murder, but you know what I mean. Helpful. It would have been helpful. Beneficial to our partnership. Because we're partners, remember?" She locked eyes with him in the rear-view mirror. "I realize I have two strikes against me because I'm young and I'm a woman, but you're not doing this partnership any favors by starting out lying to me."

As soon as the words left her mouth, a lump formed in her throat. _She'd_ started out lying to _him_. She'd done it first.

"She has a point, Dad," said Laurel.

"Hey, now, whose side are you on?" he joked. "Isn't half this mess your fault?"

"A third," Laurel said. "One-third me, one-third you, and one-third the vigilante."

"I'm pretty sure his third is slightly bigger than mine."

"Well, your third is definitely bigger than my third."

"Excuse me?" said Lance. "Who was working with the vigilante again?"

He was half-smiling, as if it was funny. What a weird family. His eyes caught hers again in the rear-view mirror.

"Smoak, I want to drop Laurel off at her apartment, and then you and I are going back to the station."

"Well, good, because my car is still there," said Felicity. "I have a cat at home that needs to be fed."

"Your last name is Smoak?" Laurel turned in her seat to look at Felicity. "Has he started with the bad puns yet?"

Felicity shook her head. "No, but it won't be anything I haven't heard before."

"I'm sure. When I said bad, I meant bad."

"Change of subject," said Lance. "You're not going home just yet, Detective."

"I'm not?" Felicity said.

"You're not. What Laurel said earlier about this hooded guy's getup gave me an idea. We have some surveillance footage to look over."

Detective Lance made Felicity go with him to walk Laurel right to her door. There was a brief argument, as Felicity thought it was ridiculous that she couldn't wait in the car—"I have a gun!"—but Lance was forceful and Felicity was overwhelmed with guilt for holding back the information she'd recovered for Oliver Queen. She stood just inside the doorway, feeling awkward and intrusive, as Lance fussed over his daughter some more, making her a cup of tea and tucking a blanket around her as she sat on her couch.

Finally, they were in the car again, headed back to the station. Detective Lance sighed heavily.

"You're right," he said. "I shouldn't have kept you in the dark about what I was doing."

She made an unintelligible noise, not trusting herself enough to speak.

"I should have told you as soon as I realized Laurel was lying to me." He parked in a fire lane outside the station. "This whole trust thing—I kind of stink at it, for reasons I'm sure you've heard about. But that's no way to start a partnership."

"It's okay," said Felicity. "I mean, it's not _okay_ okay, but I'm over it. So you can stop agonizing about it or punishing yourself or whatever. I'm actually stuck on the part where you said we're going over surveillance footage."

Lance smiled. "I had a thought. It's kind of a shot in the dark, but it could give us a lead."

She followed him into the station. He threaded his way through the desks in the squad room, stopping at his own. He unlocked a drawer, rifled through it, and came up with a disk. He nodded for her to follow him again.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To the DVD player in the conference room."

"What's showing?"

"Security camera feeds from the Exchange Building," he replied.

Lance loaded the disk and used the remote to skip ahead. The time stamp jumped forward in half-hour increments, and then he slowed it down to around the time of the shooting.

"What exactly are we looking for?" she asked.

"Anything out of the ordinary."

She could see that the camera was aimed at a stairwell. The door was clearly visible, as was the metal trash can next to it.

"What's that?" Felicity asked.

"What?"

"Right there," she said, pointing to the screen. She took the remote from him and backed up the video a few seconds.

The door opened and a tall figure stepped into the frame. He took the cover off the trash can and pulled out a bundle and a long . . .

"Is that a _bow_?" Lance asked.

Felicity slowed the video down even more, until it was playing frame by frame. With jerky movements, the tall figure slung the bundle over his shoulder and made for the stairs. He didn't glance at the camera, but he was looking straight ahead. She hit the pause button, and Oliver Queen's face froze on the screen.

"We got him!"

Felicity jumped when Lance shouted. She dragged her gaze away from the image. Lance was waving the remote around like she would have if she'd been really fired up about something.

"I knew it!" he said. "I knew that smug smartass was up to no good."

Detective Lance was off and running, and for the next couple of hours, it was all she could do just to keep up. It seemed so tenuous, the assumption that Oliver Queen was the vigilante based almost entirely on a grainy video from one crime scene. Felicity had somehow briefly nodded off while sitting upright in the middle of a conversation, and it was then that Lance finally told her to go home.

Home. Sleep. It sounded tempting on the surface, but Felicity knew she would be wide awake as soon as her head hit the pillow. When she entered her apartment, Jpeg walked over to her, turned his back, and sat down. He only did that when he was really mad at her for being gone so long. She fed him, and he went right back to ignoring her.

Felicity changed into pajamas and sat on the couch. She didn't think she could sleep now if she tried. Caffeine and guilt was a potent combination. The TV was on, tuned to an episode of _Project Runway_ from her DVR, but her mind was focused elsewhere.

She'd lied to her partner, and she'd done it just days into their partnership. And then she busted him for doing the exact same thing.

"Oh, I am bad," she moaned, putting her head in her hands. "I am a bad, bad person."

Felicity sat up. It was time to consider her options.

"I can't come clean with him now," she said. "I'll look like a hypocrite—_which I am_—and he'll probably request a new partner and I'll get sent back to I.A." She suppressed a shudder at that thought. "So I just keep it to myself, right?" she asked Jpeg. He was unmoved, sitting next to her with his back turned.

"Okay, so I keep it to myself, then." Felicity picked at a loose thread on the arm of the couch. "But Oliver . . . I have to actually face him tomorrow. I have to help _arrest_ him, Jpeg." The cat's black ears twitched. "He could tell Detective Lance that I helped him. Oh my God, did I help the vigilante kill someone?"

There would definitely be no sleeping now. She felt betrayed, though she knew that wasn't logical. Betrayed by Oliver Queen's charming demeanor and handsome face. How was she to reconcile the sincerity she'd seen in his eyes with what Laurel had said about looking at the vigilante and seeing something inhuman within?

They met in the squad room at nine the next morning, Felicity, Detective Lance, Detective Hilton, and two uniformed officers. It seemed like overkill until Felicity thought back on all the crimes the vigilante was tied to—violent crimes. Any objections she might have had died on her lips. Until they were actually in the SUV, on their way to the Queen mansion with an arrest warrant in hand.

"Are we really sure about this?" she asked. "I mean, we're about to charge into the home of one of the richest families in the country to arrest the heir for murder."

"And vigilantism," Lance added. "It's in the warrant."

"And obviously having a warrant means there's at least _some_ evidence, but really, all we have is a few seconds of video footage plus Oliver Queen's habit of ditching his bodyguards and disappearing for hours." She pushed her glasses up on her nose.

"Are you flaking out on me, Smoak?" he asked. "Because we're partners, remember? We're in this together."

"I'm—I'm in," Felicity said hesitantly. "I just . . ." She sighed. "I'm in."

"Good."

Felicity had been wildly curious about the Queen mansion and the Queens themselves for days now. She'd seen the house in photos, but it was massive in person. As she hopped down from the SUV, she craned her neck to take in the whole building. It had an air of decay to it, like a crumbling castle.

Detective Lance led the way, beginning to swagger as he approached the front doors. A maid in a uniform opened the door before Lance could knock.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"I doubt it very much," said Lance, "unless you can point us in the direction of Mr. Queen."

The maid's eyebrows rose to her hairline. She raised her hand and indicated a hallway off to the left. Lance charged in that direction, Felicity, Hilton, and the other cops following in his wake. The hallway opened into a spacious, ornately decorated room. Maybe a living room, but it was the first one Felicity had ever seen (outside of magazines) that didn't have a TV. Everything was cream and shades of gold, and standing in the middle of it were Oliver Queen and his bodyguard. The two men dropped their handshake.

Oliver rolled his eyes. "What now, Detective?" He seemed to be making a point of not looking at Felicity. She hoped that meant he wouldn't say anything about their previous contact, but there was no way to let him know that she wouldn't say anything either.

"Oliver Jonas Queen, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice, aggravated assault, trespassing, acting as a vigilante, and murder."

A teenage girl with sleep-rumpled hair burst into the room as Lance rattled off the charges. "Ollie, what's going on?" she asked.

"Let's go." Detective Lance snapped his fingers, and the two uniformed officers stepped forward to slap a pair of handcuffs on the young billionaire.

"Ollie!" The girl launched herself at the cop with his hand on Oliver's elbow, but Hilton grabbed her and held her back as Oliver was led from the room.

There was a fire in the girl's eyes that Felicity recognized. Anger and fear all wrapped together in a crackling, sparking mess. Felicity caught Hilton's gaze and nodded toward the girl she knew to be Oliver's sister. Hilton inclined his head and let go of her, then headed off in the direction Lance and the other cops had taken Oliver Queen.

Felicity put her hand on Thea Queen's shoulder, but the girl shook her off. She glared at Felicity, and then looked her up and down, assessing her.

"Who are you?" Thea demanded. "You're too young to be a cop. What are you doing with those stupid jerks who just took my brother away?"

"It's not important," said Felicity. "Look, I know you're upset, but if you go after them, they'll just arrest you too."

Thea's shoulders slumped.

"Call your mom, okay? And have her call a lawyer." Felicity smiled a little. It was easier to lie with a smile on her face. "It's going to be okay."


End file.
